Welcome from the Vice President for Research

CWRU researchers are among the most distinguished in the world. We have 16 Nobel Laureates among current and former faculty and alumni, 4 members of the National Academies of Sciences, 7 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 8 members of the Institute of Medicine. We also partner with artistic and cultural institutions on a broad range of projects that make important scholarly contributions in the humanities and social sciences.

Extraordinary research requires an outstanding infrastructure. Our Office of Research & Technology Management provides support to seek out grant funding, to facilitate industrial sponsorship, and to transfer university technologies to the marketplace. This is a place for people driven to make a difference, and our office exists to help them succeed.

SpartaCOI is now available for 2014 Annual Outside Financial Interests Certification

It is time for all full-time faculty and non-faculty investigators to complete the annual CWRU Outside Financial
Interests Certification Form.
CWRU Conflict of Interests Policy requires disclosure at least annually and the deadline
for completion of the 2014 form is April 1, 2015.

The Collections in Support of Biological Research (CSBR) Program provides funds: 1) for improvements to secure, improve, and organize collections that are significant to the NSF BIO-funded research community; 2) to secure collections-related data for sustained, accurate, and efficient accessibility of the collection to the biological research community; and 3) to transfer collection ownership responsibilities.

The CSBR program provides for enhancements that secure and improve existing collections, result in accessible digitized specimen-related data, and develop better methods for specimen curation and collection management. Requests should demonstrate a clear and urgent need to secure the collection, and the proposed activities should address that need. Biological collections supported include established living stock/culture collections, vouchered non-living natural history collections, and jointly-curated ancillary collections such as preserved tissues and DNA libraries.

The objective of the Program is to make available to institutions expensive research instruments that can only be justified on a shared-use basis and that are needed for NIH-supported projects in basic, translational or clinical areas of biomedical/behavioral research. The SIG Program provides funds to purchase or upgrade a single item of expensive, specialized, commercially available instrument or an integrated instrumentation system. An integrated instrumentation system is one in which the components, when used in conjunction with one another, perform a function that no single component could provide. The components must be dedicated to the system and not used independently.

Types of supported instruments include, but are not limited to: x-ray diffractometers, electron and confocal microscopes, mass and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometers, protein and DNA sequencers, biosensors, cell sorters, and biomedical imagers. Applications for "stand alone" computer systems (supercomputers, computer clusters and storage systems) will only be considered if the instrument is solely dedicated to the research needs of a broad community of NIH-supported investigators.

Instruments must be for research purposes only. Applications for research on advancing the design or for the development of new instrumentation are not appropriate for this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA).

The Collections in Support of Biological Research (CSBR) Program provides funds: 1) for improvements to secure, improve, and organize collections that are significant to the NSF BIO-funded research community; 2) to secure collections-related data for sustained, accurate, and efficient accessibility of the collection to the biological research community; and 3) to transfer collection ownership responsibilities.

The CSBR program provides for enhancements that secure and improve existing collections, result in accessible digitized specimen-related data, and develop better methods for specimen curation and collection management. Requests should demonstrate a clear and urgent need to secure the collection, and the proposed activities should address that need. Biological collections supported include established living stock/culture collections, vouchered non-living natural history collections, and jointly-curated ancillary collections such as preserved tissues and DNA libraries.

The National Endowment for the Humanities has announced a new grant opportunity that encourages the publication of nonfiction books that apply serious humanities scholarship to subjects of general interest and appeal.

The new NEH Public Scholar awards support well-researched books in the humanities conceived and written to reach a broad readership. Books supported through this program might present a narrative history, tell the stories of important individuals, analyze significant texts, provide a synthesis of ideas, revive interest in a neglected subject, or examine the latest thinking on a topic. Most importantly, they should open up important and appealing subjects for wider audiences by presenting significant humanities topics in a way that is accessible to general readers.

The Public Scholar program is open to both independent scholars and individuals affiliated with scholarly institutions. It offers a stipend of $4,200 per month for a period of six to twelve months. The maximum stipend is $50,400 for a twelve-month period. Applicants must have previously published a book or monograph with a university or commercial press, or articles and essays that reach a wide readership.

Application Deadline for first cycle: March 3, 2015
For more information visit the NEH website.

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) have launched the Beyond the Box National Digitization Innovation Competition. The initiative will award $1 million to the individual or team who develops a novel way to accurately and efficiently capture digital images of insect specimens and their associated data from a standard museum drawer of insects.

The Beyond the Box Digitization Challenge has been designed to stimulate individuals or teams to solve a problem that is hindering scientific research and innovation - the inability to quickly and accurately digitize specimens and associated data in a standard tray of insects in a natural history museum. Solving this problem will help advance research as well as contribute to improved public health, environmental management, and agriculture by providing scientists, farmers, health care providers, and citizen scientists with access to our nation's insect collections. Moreover, the solution to this problem will almost certainly find additional applications in scientific and commercial settings.
The winning entry will receive up to $1 million for the development of a hardware and software system that automates digitization of pinned insect specimens, without damaging the specimens--one of the most challenging biocollections digitization tasks.

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